On 9 September 2026, Beyond Blue launched The Future We Choose at Australian Parliament House. Commissioned to mark Beyond Blue’s 25th year and produced by CSIRO using strategic foresight methodology, the report maps four possible futures for mental health in Australia and five shifts that could move the country from a system defined by crisis response to one that is preventative, connected and easier to navigate.

Sixty guests gathered in the Dame Enid Lyons Alcove before breakfast, drawn from government, research, business and community organisations alongside people with lived and living experience. Beyond Blue built and ran the program. Damsel and Sprout built the room it happened in.

Client: Beyond Blue
Year: 2026
Venue: Dame Enid Lyons Alcove, Australian Parliament House
Format: Breakfast report launch with ministerial address and panel discussion
Audience: 60 guests

What we delivered

• Parliament House logistics, access and loading dock delivery, including receiving and storing stock at our warehouse
• Venue liaison
• Room set up and pack down
• Event styling
• Design and print of the full signage suite: stage backdrop, large format signs, lectern sign and table acrylics
• Supply of D&S display stock: white sign frames, acrylic table stands and the report display plinth

Styling that gets out of the way

A report about mental health does not want a loud room. Every piece of signage in the Alcove was designed and produced in house, from the stage backdrop to the two large format signs to the acrylics on each table, which meant restraint could be a decision rather than an accident. White linen, one card per table, nothing else on the surfaces, and the only colour anywhere was Beyond Blue’s own. Restraint is harder than decoration because there is nothing to hide behind, when a room is this plain, every table position, every sightline and every cable is visible. It is also the only setting in which a document can be the most interesting object present.

Twenty five years, then thirty minutes on the next ten

Beyond Blue Chair the Hon Linda Dessau AC CVO opened and introduced the Hon Mark Butler MP. CEO Georgie Harman AO marked 25 years of the organisation, then handed to a panel of Dr Alexandra Bratanova, William Cook and Dayle Stevens OAM. Four speaking formats inside forty five minutes, all of it staged from one lectern and three stools at the end of a room with no fixed AV.

Sixty people in an alcove

The Dame Enid Lyons Alcove is a long, light-filled space rather than a function room. The stage, media wall and lectern sat at one end while cocktail tables ran the length of it, so guests could see the panel from anywhere without the room feeling like a lecture. Sixty people is small by the standards of this building. It is also the size at which every sightline and every table position is visible to everyone.

A backdrop that outlives the launch

The stage backdrop was built for Beyond Blue to keep. Most event signage is produced for a single morning and recycled the same afternoon, which is fine for a date stamped piece and wasteful for a brand statement that will be true for years. This one was made to be theirs, to travel, and to be used again long after the Alcove was packed down.

This is one of many events we’ve produced at Parliament House.
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